On Being Born

He sliced through the mountains of blubber in front of him. Blood gushed out onto the deck. It pooled around his green rubber boots before it slowly dripped down the gutters, back into the ocean.

“It is all one continuous cycle,” he muttered to himself, “you were born from ocean water and to ocean water you shall return.”

When he first started, more than forty years ago, the entire process had revolted him to the point of nausea. His throat would constrict so he felt like he was sucking air through a straw and his stomach churned.
Not so anymore.
On that deck, he had discovered an uncomfortable truth about himself. Far away from civilization, he had learned he could get used to anything. It was not a truth he liked to think about very often.

The eye of the blue whale stared into nothingness, into the black void above the ship. He followed its gaze. Stars twinkled overhead like nothing was different from all other previous nights.

They were wrong.

He dug into the abdominal cavity. The stench of bile, blood, stomach acid and postmortem rot hit his nose. It was a smell that was nearly impossible to get rid of. Even during his holidays he would continually smell death. It stuck to his hair, to his skin, to the inside of his nostrils and to his memories.

Once inside the carcass, he severed the fibers attaching the internal organs to the stomach lining. A liver the size of his own body slithered out from underneath his feet.

His thoughts drifted away from his job and towards his God. He wondered if he would be forgiven for all . . . this, when his time had finally come. It had been on his mind a lot lately. Each night, when his aging body collapsed onto the bed, he would talk to God. And each night, he found himself begging for absolution.

God never answered.

He crawled out of the, now emty, whale and stretched his limbs. With a pop, his back adjusted itself into correct alignment. His job was done. The body was sufficiently processed and would be shipped elsewhere for whale oil extraction, fin soup and other products he didn’t want to think about.

He readied himself for his usual Last Salute. This was his tribute to the life the whale had sacrificed without its consent. It had become routine over the years, but he always tried to give it his entire attention regardless. The whales deserved it, so he felt.

He raised his hand to his forehead.

Before he could close his eyes, he froze. Did something move? He blinked twice. Something definitely moved.

His eyes narrowed and he stepped in a little closer. Where the chest cavity was seperated from the reproductive system, he saw what he could only describe as a nudge. Then, a squirm. A push.

Operating purely on instinct, he crawled back inside the remains and carefully slid his knife across the moving body part. Deeper and deeper he cut into the moving tissue.

He pushed his fingers into the opening he had created and parted the flesh. A wave of water poured out and drenched him. It smelled sweet. His boots grew heavy as his woolly socks absorbed the liquid.

He plunged his arms into the cut, all the way up to his shoulders. There was tissue and more fluid, but nothing that could have made those movements.

It was time to stop, he decided. This was foolish, what was he thinking? There was no way.

But then his hands hooked around something warm and slippery. For a moment, he didn’t know what to do before it occurred to him there was nothing else to be done. He pulled with all the energy he had left in his weary body.

It happened faster than he had anticipated. He fell back and his head bounced on the deck. For the briefest moment, the stars above him extinguished.

When his vision returned, accompanied with a headache, he looked down at the weight on his legs. A small eye looked up at him, terrified. It was an eye he recognized.

The calf whimpered as it squirmed in an attempt to find its mother.

The animal was heavy. He pushed her onto the deck and got up. The scene was magnificently strange. A gutted whale and a tiny living, breathing baby whale, still physically connected through the umbilical cord.

He lifted the baby’s tail. Female.

As he cut the cord, he felt a connection to her he couldn’t quantify. How had she survived? What did it mean?

In an impulse, he wrapped his arms around her and guided her towards a thick patch of blood. He cupped his hands and scraped his fingers along the rough, wooden surface of the deck. When he presented her mother’s sacrifice, she sniffed and stuck her snout in his hands. A thick layer of blood coagulated onto her stubby snout.

She should have spent ample time at her mother’s teat, but that could never be. He closed his eyes to ward off the tears.

His heart grew heavy. It raced unsteadily at the thought she would never make it. For a moment, he thought about putting the infant out of her misery. The whaler shook his head. The calf was innocent.

“So were all the others.”

A loud voice. Thunderous. He turned around to see if anyone was there.

“What is so different about this one?” the voice roared.

He scanned the deck once more.

“Hello?” he called out. “Anybody there?”

No answer. Still, the voice was all around him. Present, but silent.

Something clicked in his brain and he knew exactly what had to be done.

He stripped off his overalls, boots and socks. There, in his naked glory, he stretched out his arms, arched his back and allowed himself to take in the full extent of the universe above him. For the briefest, glorious moment, he was part of it and it was part of him.

With a deep sigh of determination, he looked down at the calf. He kneeled behind her and placed his bony, calloused hands on her body. Steam rose from her smooth skin. She smelled of ocean and death.

He pushed.

At the edge of the deck he lifted her up, barely enough for him to wrap his arms around her.

With his eyes closed, and a deep breath locked inside his chest, they plunged into the ocean. Together.

The water enveloped them. The shock of the change in temperature stiffened his body and all he could do was hold on. But this was her turf, she knew precisely what to do.

The salty water prickled in his eyes when he looked at his surroundings. Deeper and deeper she pulled him into the abyss, far away from the ship. Further away than he had ever been, from everything.

His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. So much life resided here, so much beauty. Out on the ship, he had never stopped to think about the other world, calmly waiting beneath him. If his lungs weren’t burning so badly, he could have appreciated it more, he thought.

When his chest was ready to burst, he let go of her

Without fear, he opened his mouth and welcomed it all into him.

A presence filled the void his fading soul left in its wake. This was His voice, he knew. It thundered no longer. Instead, it caressed him. A kind and gentle breeze. Calming. Soothing.

Waves of peace lapped around him.

His final act brought with it redemption, God told him. Not because of the act itself, but because he had done so without concern for his own wellbeing. He had embraced his sorrows and regrets, had attempted to save a new life and expected nothing in return.

“Now, you are completely alive.”

The whaler’s tears mixed seamlessly with the ocean. He smiled at God and took his final place within the tides of the expanse.

He was forgiven.

He was born.